BANISHING THE PLAGUES 



ventative measures that according to Dr. Hears "the 

 fly has now become a rara avis within the Zone limits, 

 and is very much less abundant than in the villages 

 and towns of our country." Dr. Hears declares that 

 during his stay in the Canal Zone he saw but a sin- 

 gle specimen; and we may readily accept his asser- 

 tion that the comfort enjoyed owing to their absence 

 is very great. 



Unlike the flea and the mosquito, the fly does not 

 transmit the disease germs directly to the human 

 subject. Its action is indirect, in that it contaminates 

 the foodstuffs. Food or milk brought from a distance 

 may thus convey typhoid or cholera; but fortunately 

 science is now provided, as we have seen, with the 

 means of combatting these diseases through inocu- 

 lations that render the subject immune. We have 

 seen that the anti-typhoid vaccine was developed at 

 the beginning of our new century by Dr. (now Sir 

 Almroth) Wright, then of the British Army service in 

 India, but it made its way rather slowly, and its use 

 in the United States Army was not made obligatory 

 until August, 1911. The New York Board of Health 

 began to manufacture it and dispense it for free ad- 

 ministration in 1913. 



The significance of this new agent of preventive 

 medicine can be realized only by those who have a 

 clear conception as to how great a scourge typhoid 

 fever has always been in the past. In war time it 

 has regularly claimed more victims than the enemy's 

 bullets. Our troops in Cuba, as everyone will recall, 

 were decimated by this scourge, which "stalked 

 through the camp, apparently unrestrained, laying low 



251 



